Imagine a man in his early forties. He is dressed in a pair of black trousers and a shirt now stained with sweat from the summer heat. Both, his skin and his shirt, seem depleted and dispirited, from years of being worn (out). He is about to endure the Subway at rush hour. God give him the power. Perhaps, he wants to go home to his three promising girls, a loving wife, and a grandfatherly cat, who live on the other side of this sleepless island city. There, he will be greeted with a table laid with warm food and drink, and surrounded by faces with varying intensities of smiles, gleaming at him, from different heights.

But at this moment, he puts on his mask, and walks into a cafe. It’s the last and only cafe, before this street ends in the Subway station, that’s open. Like most corner-side-dilapidated cafes, this one is functional, but not in the least enjoyable. The wallpapers are stained and peeling. It smells like the insides of an old musty coat. A coat, no matter how much you clean it, will be tainted with decades of smoke, people, and regrets that will never go away.

I watch him pour a cup of strong coffee from a steel carafe into a plastic cup. It’s cold and dark. Then, the same cup is made to go round and round, like a man in a play, in a shoddy old microwave. It reeks, not of coffee, but something burnt, something metallic. He walks right past me, engulfing my senses in the bitter smell. Yuck. I let out a deep sign and close my eyes. The dark tunnels of the subway, swirling and never-ending, as if stirred with a tad of milk, come before me. The faintest sounds, of the flies, of the water that’s rushing below the ground under my feet, are made louder and louder, as I go in, deeper and deeper. I hear the drums rolling in the deep. And just when there is no escape, a soft and rehearsed dialogue, of a 30 something year old train operator, rescues me from the clenches of my bitter reverie. I smile thankfully.

On the train I’m blessed with an aisle seat. I eye him, only a few feet away, fidgeting with… his watch. What is there to see but the time of the day? You must already know the time. Didn’t you make it on this train? I’m long past the days when I would manipulate the time for myself. I would set my watch ten minutes behind the “actual” time: the time that the adults would strictly follow. It gave me a sense of control over time. An extra ten minutes to do what I please. But now, my watch reigns over me. It tells me when I should wake up, when I should walk, and when I should run. I have no semblance of control.

With one arm in his pocket, and the watch now hidden, and the other holding on to the berth’s straps, he stands tall with a briefcase between his legs. A spot conveniently opens up across mine. As he approaches, I notice the missing togo cup. He must have chugged the coffee. Thankfully, sparing me the deadly whiff for the remainder of this subway ride. I watch him secure his backside on the seat, made from a tree that was killed in the last century. He places his briefcase, horizontally, on his long right-angled legs and opens it. My view is now obstructed for the next few minutes.

Could the briefcase be a family heirloom? There is an inscription that I can hardly see. Perhaps, it belonged to his, now deceased, father who was also a commuter. That would make the briefcase older than I am. What if he suddenly brandishes a gun on this Subway? Should I be worried? No, I’m just overthinking it. I should stop.

He closes the briefcase shut. A thin tattered copy is revealed in his arms, below by a pair of reading glasses sliding down his pointy nose. I ease my eyes and straighten my head to seem uninterested. After a moment’s pause, I’m reminded about all that fills up this time capsule. The tourists, the immigrants, the old timers, the luggage, the bikes, the prams, the dogs, the voices, this man reading his old copy and all that that will be recycled, from one station to another.

My adventure, has indeed, come to an end.

I amble to the sliding doors and slip a final glance, and a judgement, before I step out. There he sits, unperturbed, by the comings and goings, fueled with a burning desire to retire his day and begin a new one tomorrow. He may read from this book again, for the nth time, to understand, why he wants to live and die in the city of New York.